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Stvrob, you're probably okay even if you do get rootstock suckers because, as you point out, yours all make edible fruit. That's probably good, since the foliage may not be different enough for you to tell the difference once they're growing, unless you're using potato-leaved scions. In your situation, I wouldn't sweat it. I've just been chiming in to help people avoid a situation I find somewhat annoying.

I don't think any of your rootstocks would compete with Maxifort for sheer vigorous growth--I think the thing could bust up concrete if it felt like it! Seriously, I grew out a couple of practice grafts made on Celebrity as a rootstock the first year, and I didn't have a problem with suckers getting out of control. Admittedly, they were in large pots rather than in the ground, which always seems to make them a bit more subdued, for my growing methods at least. You should be fine, especially if you're young and limber enough to get down and keep an eye on those suckers.

I've never planted a grafted tomato, This is my first year experimenting with grafts. I do not intend to plant them deep no matter how leggy they are because I don't want to risk roots forming above the graft. That would defeat the purpose of grafting it by risking the scion to soilbourne infection.

Thanks, Stvrob, I agree with your point,
the reason for me to graft is to have healthy tomatoes, so I have to plant it as deep as the grafting cut is, not deeper.
Than I have a second question, how long the tomatoes take to regroup/heal before they begin growing again after grafting. I assume 10 days to 2 weeks.
thanks again
Ella

I finally took the first batch out of the healing chamber. I guess I'll know how many survived in a couple of days. Some of them are really wilted over so I'm assuming those will be the failures but I'll give them some time and see. I also grafted my third batch of tomatoes yesterday and they went into the vacated healing chamber.

This is really a lot of fun. It's kinda like anticipating a whole batch of new varieties and how they will do in the garden. All of the grafted tomatoes will be new varieties in a way so I'm really looking forward to seeing how they will do once they get in the garden. I'm not going to do any special preparation for transplanting them just what I used to do. I will not be applying any bleach to the spots to give them a head start against fusarium. With the mild wet winter we have had this should make for a good test to see if they can show more resistance than the regular non grafted plant. I am really having high hopes that I can have success with some of my favorite varieties that usually succumb to fusarium very early in the season.

B54, if they're wilted, put them back in the chamber or in another closed container and mist the container. After they recover, expose them to normal humidity a bit more gradually. Some of them just take a bit more time to heal.

Pic1 is what my week old grafts looked like in the afternoon yesterday. I've moved them over to the 2nd healing bin where they get indirect light throughout the daytime.

Pic2 shows my 2nd flight of grafts a day after the surgery. They're still getting total darkness in the 1st healing chamber. I briefly open the bin up once a day to let in fresh air (and no doubt loads of pathogens). I'll be opening the bin twice a day now that it's bin 48 hours.
-naysen

B54, if they're wilted, put them back in the chamber or in another closed container and mist the container. After they recover, expose them to normal humidity a bit more gradually. Some of them just take a bit more time to heal.

I already tried that on some of them and it made no difference after two days so I just set them out on the porch. Our humidity right now is 88% and that is the lowest it has been in 3 days so I don't think lack of humidity is the problem. I think the grafts may not have taken well on a couple of them. I had real problems finding matching scions and rootstock. I've already filled my healing chambers up with more new grafts. I was not expecting the results to be as good as they seem to be so far so I am very happy.

Cole, I'd like to see the experiment repeated under controlled conditions twenty times. Let's see the distribution across some set of metrics. I doubt we'll all get what looks like 10x fruit output in the same space as is shown in that pic.

BTW, I'll be doing some side-to-side comparisons of grafted vs. ungrafted in my beds this summer. I'd just assume go all grafted, but my success rate will not allow that.

I've experimented two years now with planting grafted and ungrafted plants of the same varieties side by side, and my results have been inconclusive at best. In general, the grafted plants do a bit better overall, but each year, my best plants have been ungrafted, and my worst ones have been grafted. I do not have soil-borne diseases here, so I am just looking for general increased vigor and production. I should also note that, despite my best intentions each year, I do not, in the heat of harvest, take actual notes of production per plant and other details that would verify my gut reactions. I just, a couple of times during the summer, stand back and say "Hm. Overall, these grafted ones look just a bit better than those other ones. But the best one is surely that impressive ungrafted specimen over there!" Most of my experimenting has been with Brandywines from Fedco, although I did use a few Brandywine Sudduth last year, and the year before last I did some other varieties, including Paul Robeson, Cherokee Purple, and Opalka, but just a couple of each of those.
By the way, I had great success with the grafts themselves - especially the first year. Last year I ran into problems with coordinating the plantings so the seedlings were the same size, so I ended up not doing as many as I planned.
It is, fun, though, to play around with.

What if you just wanted to graft 2 varieties on to one plant. Say you let 1 plant grow in a location let it split in to 2 vines. Cut one vine off and graft it with something younger for your scion or use sucker from another plant to use as your scion. I wonder if that would work. I have taped completely broken branches before and they healed just fine. So i wonder if it would be possible to do the same and graft something else without all the humidity domes and such. Let it wilt and recover on its own?

I think I will next purchase some Amelia seed which have to be bought in fairly large quantities to get them at a reasonable price. They are extremely vigorous plants that are determinate used by most of the commercial growers around here. They are so vigorous that they need some pruning even though they are determinate and they have a huge fruit set.

Since I'm having some success with the grafting it is only logical to step up to a very strong rootstock and see the results from that. If that works out fine this year then I may bite the bullet and buy some of the super rootstock seed to see if they are any better. I don't feel like experimenting with seed that costly before I get the grafting technique down pat. Right now I just want a rootstock that will withstand fusarium for a good bit longer than most heirlooms will. There aren't that many hybrids available or even rootstock seed that are resistant to all three races of fusarium and that is what I need. In my garden even the good hybrids with resistance to two races of fusarium only have a little better than even chance of lasting long enough to have really good production.

Well I got a count on my failures for my first attempt at grafting. Six out of 23 failed. Four of the six were the smallest plants grafted. One was very tall and skinny with a long scion and rootstock. I was surprised that almost all of the smallest plants failed. I thought they would be the most successful. My second set is in the healing chamber and I will start opening it a bit and in a few days I'll get the results from them. The second batch had larger plants and more mismatched scions and rootstock so I'm eager to see how they fared.

I am about to order my Amelia seed from Harris Seed and noticed another hybrid with triple fusarium resistance called Crista that is a compact plant. Since grafting is supposed to add vigor I was wondering what would happen if you grafted a vigorous scion like Gary O' Sena to a compact rootstock? Would it take away from the vigor of the scion and create a more compact version or what? Does anyone have any experience with doing this?

This is kinda cool.
I did a bud graft (like we do for citrus trees) of an Amish Paste onto a celebrity cutting. I sliced a dormant bud from an Amish Paste (that was too big for regular grafting) and sliced it off the stem with a razor, with the leaf stem used as a handle. So it looked like a little shield. Then I made a corresponding slice on the stem of the rootstock and wrapped a rubberband around it while my daughter placed a drop of superglue on the rubber band to hold it tight. I did this about 7 days ago, and now the bud is starting to grow! I really didnt think it would work, the plant was too big to go in a humidity chamber. I just left it outside in the shade until the day before yesterday.
If this works out I think I could get away with grafting buds on much more mature plants where its not really possible to nurse it along in a protected environment.

The graft above the silicone clip is a brandywine I grafted on about 2 weeks ago. I see one more sucker that could have something grafted to it. Maybe a cherokee purple or an Opalka?

B54:
thats the way they do it for fruit trees, IE a compact or Dwarf rootstock with an appealing fruit scion to make a small-yard sized dwarf tree. I imagine it would be the same way with tomatoes.

Is "Crista" a determinate dwarf?

Yes, it is a determinate. I didn't order any but I may next year because there are more than a couple of varieties that I would be happy to see less growth from; but I don't know if it would affect the amount of fruit set or size of the fruit.

I like what you did with the rubber band grafting. Keep us unformed as to how well it ends up working out in the long run. That might be fun to try.